Thursday, March 8, 2012

XMetA is the first antibody specific for the insulin receptor shown to correct hyperglycemia in a mouse model of diabetes. Results of a study conducted by XOMA and confirmed by investigators at the University of California, San Francisco, demonstrate that XMetA has the potential to be a novel, long-acting agent for the control of blood glucose levels in patients with diabetes.
The study by Bhaskar, et al. demonstrated that XMetA markedly reduced elevated fasting blood glucose levels and normalized glucose tolerance in mice experimentally rendered diabetic. After six weeks of treatment, there was a statistically significant reduction in hemoglobin A1c levels in animals treated with XMetA compared to controls (p < 0.05). In addition, elevated non-HDL cholesterol levels were improved relative to control mice (p < 0.05). Hypoglycemia and weight gain were not observed during this study, nor was proliferation of cell growth.

What is in This Blog?

My goal, starting in 2012, (and including as much before then as possible) is to have a blog entry for every treatment reported to have cured type-1 diabetes in NOD mice, or any other animal.

Each entry in this blog is a report of one cure for type-1 diabetes in an animal.

Each title will be of the form TREATMENT by DOCTOR at RESEARCH INSTITUTION.

Each entry will have the date the cure was reported, one or more links to news reports, press releases, or research papers, and maybe a paragraph on the cure.

But I don't plan to put much analysis or discussion in these blog entries. I'm leaving comments open for now, but I really only want comments to note when one of these cures moves to a later stage of research.

Remember: this blog reports on animal research. Even the most successful results from animal research will usually take over 10 years to be approved for human use, and the chance that this will happen is less than 1%. So far, no treatment that has cured type-1 in mice has been successful in people.

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Why This Blog?

This blog exists because of frustration. My frustration at constantly hearing that type-1 diabetes had been cured in mice (again), but never hearing that it was cured in people.

My way of dealing with this frustration is to try to keep track of the number of times people cure type-1 diabetes in animals. After all the first step to understanding something, is to catalog it. You can think of this blog as raw material for future research into type-1 cures in mice.

At the very least, this blog will help the entire type-1 diabetes research community keep track of how many mice cures are developed each year, what happens to them, and how long it takes to happen. I hope that the data found will fuel other types of "research into research" on type-1 diabetes.

Types of Stem Cells

There are many different types of stem cells, and I don't think they are interchangeable, so I try to use the following abbreviations to identify exactly which ones are being used:

aSC: adult stem cells (in general)

eSC: embryonic stem cells (in general)

hESC: human embryonic stem cells

hSC: hematopoietic stem cells (from cord blood)

iPS: induced pluripotent stem cells (harvested from adults, but then changed back so they can grow into new cells)

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Want To Help Out?

You can help me with this blog by emailing me anytime you see a cure for type-1 diabetes in any animal. Just email me the URL for the news article or journal report. That's all I need to add it. Thanks!

About Animal Experiments

Things to remember about experiments on animals (sometimes called "pre-clinical trials"):

* Most research is not successful.

* New research done in animals is at least 10-15 years away from general availability to people.

* Most research done in animals never progresses to people.

* Although NOD mice are generally considered the best animal model of type-1 diabetes, they differ from people with type-1 in many ways.

* Recently we have cured type-1 diabetes in animals many times each year, but so far, none of those cures has turned into a cure for people.